Abidjan/Conakry: The next time you unwrap a chocolate bar, there is a good chance its story began on a small family farm in West Africa. Côte d’Ivoire alone produces about 44% of the world’s cocoa, while neighbouring Guinea is an emerging producer. But for decades, expanding cocoa production has also put pressure on forests.
In June 2026, the Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT brought together more than 70 stakeholders in Abidjan and Conakry to explore how cocoa can grow alongside trees rather than at their expense, according to CGIAR .
The Problem With Planting Trees
Cocoa is central to Côte d’Ivoire’s economy, supporting millions of smallholder farmers and contributing significantly to export earnings. Yet the country has lost much of its forest cover since the 1950s, and cocoa production has contributed to forest clearing, including inside protected areas. In Guinea, cocoa production is concentrated largely in the Forest Guinea region, where farmers face low yields, ageing plantations, limited infrastructure, and poor access to finance and agricultural advice .
Climate change is adding another layer of pressure. Rising temperatures, changing rainfall, droughts and floods threaten both cocoa production and household incomes. At the same time, the European Union Deforestation Regulation (EUDR) is increasing the importance of traceability and demonstrating that cocoa entering the EU market is not associated with deforestation or forest degradation .
Agroforestry — integrating shade, fruit and timber trees into cocoa farms — offers a way forward. These trees can provide carbon storage, habitat, soil benefits and shade, while helping farms adapt to a changing climate. Research suggests that expanding tree-based cocoa systems across West Africa could deliver substantial climate benefits .
Farmers Cannot Do It Alone
But the challenge is not simply convincing farmers to plant more trees. The bigger question is whether the system around farmers enables them to do so .
Farmers may lack secure rights over land and trees. Agroforestry can require additional labour, while some financial benefits take years to materialise. Quality seedlings, extension services and affordable finance may be difficult to access, and markets do not always reward farmers for producing cocoa more sustainably .
“For a cocoa farmer, planting a shade tree is a wager on the future,” a companion CGIAR analysis notes. “The shade tree offers benefits that may take years to materialise, while the farmer has to find suitable seedlings and decide whether the investment makes sense on land they may be uncertain they will continue to farm on” .
In Côte d’Ivoire, that pressure for immediate income helps explain the durability of the pisteur, the informal aggregator who travels to remote farms to buy cocoa. From a traceability standpoint, the arrangement is problematic — transactions may leave little or no farm-level record. Yet from the farmer’s standpoint, the pisteur solves a different problem: he comes to the farm and, crucially, he pays .
Two Countries, Different Starting Points
The discussions produced two country-level frameworks for action. In Côte d’Ivoire, participants highlighted markets, farmer training and advice, and finance as urgent priorities. In Guinea, discussions highlighted finance and market access, alongside the importance of strong institutions, extension services and coordination .
Guinea presents a different version of the same challenge. Its cocoa sector is smaller and more informal, with little formal finance, limited public extension and very little domestic processing. In some areas, roads become difficult during the rainy season, narrowing farmers’ access to markets and services. Planting material may be chosen less from a catalogue of recommended varieties than from whatever happens to be available nearby .
Yet the idea of growing trees alongside cocoa is hardly foreign to farmers there. Those interviewed for the Guinea report described systems that include kola, avocado, citrus and timber species. The challenge is to help farmers manage these systems deliberately over time — choosing appropriate species, controlling shade, and maintaining productive cocoa trees after a project ends .
From Evidence to Shared Priorities
The workshops applied a Six-Step Scaling Approach that asks not only what farmers need to change on their farms, but what needs to change in the wider system: where emissions and forest loss originate, what governments are trying to achieve, what enables or prevents adoption, how value chains can improve, what business models and financing can support change, and what the trade-offs will be for climate and people .
Participants also identified practical areas for action, including stronger rights over land and trees, and better coordination among the many organisations working across the cocoa sector .
As the CGIAR analysis puts it, the challenge is not a single intervention or a set of services. It is whether the enabling environment — from tenure security to finance to market incentives — can be built to support a long-term investment that farmers are being asked to make .
